Readers of this newsletter sometimes send me research articles on topics I’ve discussed.
One who is always on the money is astute reader Steve (no relation to me, Reeves, or McQueen). His recent toss to me was by neurophysiologist Chad Waterbury, and it has to do with Speed Sets—fast reps…
Incidentally, neurophysiology involves the study of the nervous system and how it affects bodily functions, like muscular contraction. That relates to diseases like Parkinson’s…
Okay, back to rep speed…
I’ve mentioned that half of my sets in my Old Man, Young Muscle workouts are speed—1.5 seconds per rep. I ditch the slow lowering on those sets and simply crank out reps in a piston-like cadence. That does a few good things:
1) Reduces “garbage negatives,” the easy lowering, or eccentric, strokes that causes damage without much growth stimulation.
2) Increases fiber activation via the myotatic reflex at the rep turnaround—when you abruptly move from negative to the positive stroke, you get an emergency neuromuscular response.
3) Possible fiber-recruitment variation via a different rep speed.
Yes, normal rep speeds, like lifting in one second and lowering in three, can have positive effects on muscle growth via heat shock protein proliferation, among other things; however…
That doesn’t mean you should do all of your sets with that “standard” speed. If you do, you may be causing too much damage and not getting the variation you need to build mass with speed—as quickly as humanly possible.
And you no doubt are not recruiting the maximum number of muscle fibers if you’re using a standard rep speed on all of your sets….
Waterbury says speed equals force, and higher force equals more motor unit recruitment…
You can’t lift a weight faster by recruiting fewer motor units.
So by doing some of your sets in Speed style, you’ll grow faster than ever before. Tomorrow I’ll have more.
Your Efficient Mass-Building Handbook: For more mass-building tips like the above plus complete workouts that include the ideal exercise for each muscle and the best stretch and contracted add-on moves, get your copy of Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
